Michigan football still plans on trip to France for practice in April

A look at the Wolverines' 2018 regular-season schedule, which opens at Notre Dame on Sept. 1, and finishes at Ohio State on Nov. 24. Video by Ryan Ford, Detroit Free Press
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Michigan football team coach Jim Harbaugh is presented with a Roma jersey by Roma midfielder Alessandro Florenzi, second from right, prior to a training session at Rome's Stadio Dei Marmi.(Photo: Alessandra Tarantino, AP)

Jim Harbaugh is still planning to take his team overseas later this year and Michigan will begin spring practice in late March.

Michigan's head coach told reporters Wednesday that the Wolverines have a current spring practice start date set for March 22. The Wolverines then have a tentative April 14 date set for an Ann Arbor spring game and still plan to close the spring session with a team trip to France.

Michigan made a similar trip to Rome last April, spending time in Italy as a team before concluding a week with three practices in Rome.

The trip, which was funded by donor money, cost between $750,000 to $800,000. Michigan made the trip optional and ended up taking 117 players overseas to Rome during its final week of spring practice.

This came after the NCAA ruled that teams could not use university-allotted spring break dates for practice trips. This rule was proposed, and ultimately passed, after Harbaugh took the Wolverines to IMG Academy for a week of spring practice during Michigan's spring vacation in 2016.

After the ruling, Harbaugh and company began to plan a spring trip to Rome that took place during its spring practice period. The trip was approved by the NCAA. Following the conclusion, Harbaugh allowed his players to vote on the next year's trip.

They picked France.

"This should be experienced by others and once someone sees someone else do something, they see it's possible," Harbaugh said last year in Rome. "This is a good way to spend our resources: Investing in players," he said. "We can't close ourselves off. We have to connect with the rest of the world.

"From this experience, it's been amazing. We're all similar. We're all part of the same team: The human race. When you throw out a ball, there is no language barrier anymore. Everybody's speaking the same language. So we feel like innovators. We feel like pioneers. Innovators for the good."